Putin ‘ultimately to blame’ for snuffing out 298 lives on downed MH17

Vladimir Putin ultimately bears responsibility for the downing of MH17 by Russian proxy forces over eastern Ukraine 11 years ago, a leading investigative journalist has said.  

Eliot Higgins spoke on the anniversary of the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet with the loss of all 298 people onboard, including 10 British citizens.  

The crime was one of the grim milestones in a pattern of hybrid military aggression that tested the West’s resolve and ultimately resulted in the all-out attack on Ukraine. 

Among those being remembered today is Richard Mayne, 20, a student who was on his way to Australia to begin studying as part of his University of Leeds course.  

Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Ukrainian pro-Moscow separatist Leonid Kharchenko have been handed life sentences over the atrocity by the District Court of the Hague but remain at large because Russia refuses to surrender them.    

Higgins, who founded Bellingcat, was among the open-source investigators who unravelled the circumstances of the tragedy amid a fog of disinformation emerging from Russia.  

He told Metro: ‘Dubinsky and Kharchenko have been pretty quiet in the last few years, unlike Girkin.

‘Girkin posted a lot of statements online that criticised Russia’s military performance in Ukraine following the 2022 invasion, which resulted in him being imprisoned for four years in 2024 by the Russian government on extremism charges.  

‘I suspect he would have had an easier time in a Dutch prison. 

‘As for the responsibility of Putin and the Kremlin, it’s clear that Putin allowed the transfer of heavy weapon systems from Russia into Ukraine, so while there’s nothing to indicate he ordered MH17 to be shot down, he does bear responsibility for allowing those weapons to be sent to Eastern Ukraine along with Russian soldiers, both in terms of the attack on MH17, and the broader loss of life in the conflict.’ 

Richard’s dad Simon has spoken of the day he waved his son off at Birmingham Airport in what would be the last time they saw each other.  

His son, heading for a year studying in Australia, was due to fly to Amsterdam to catch MH17 onwards to Kuala Lumpur. But as the Boeing 777 travelled over the breakaway Donbas region of eastern Ukraine it was struck by a ground-to-air missile fired by separatists.  

The Hague-decreed act of murder on July 17, 2014, also claimed the life of Loughborough University student Ben Pocock, 20, from Bristol.  

Aside from the UK victims, 196 were Dutch with many from other countries, including 43 from Malaysia and 38 from Australia.

Eighty were children.  

Bodies and wreckage landed in fields of sunflowers — which have become a symbol of the tragedy — near Hrabove in the area seized by the rebels.  

Bellingcat gathered a plethora of time-stamped evidence, including photographs and videos, to show that a Buk missile launcher was transported through the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on the day before the jet was shot down.  

The weapons system was operated by the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, according to the researchers, who, along with other open source investigators, found images of it in transport.

According to Dutch prosecutors, separatists in an agricultural field near the city of Snizhe in Donetsk congratulated each other after firing the missile, believing they had shot down an enemy aircraft.

The Hague subsequently sentenced separatist military leader Girkin, commanding officer Dubinsky and executive commander Kharchenko to life imprisonment for murder in absentia and ordered their arrests after the district court trial concluded in November 2022.   

The court found they had caused ‘devastating destruction’ with ‘unforeseeably serious consequences for the relatives.’

The verdicts helped counter disinformation emanating from Russia about how the plane was downed, including alleged eyewitnesses who saw Ukrainian fighter jets in the vicinity at the time the missile was fired.  

The attempt to pin the blame on Kyiv contradicted earlier Russian media reports about the downing of a Ukrainian military aircraft. 

‘It gives [the victims’ families] a sense of closure, that there’s been a serious effort to establish the truth, and that there are convictions based on a thorough legal process,’ Higgins said of the verdicts.  

‘With the amount of disinformation that was pumped out about MH17, having those official investigations helps them draw a line under events, rather than it feeling like an open question that propagandists are happy to answer with their own theories.’ 

The verdicts were followed by the European Court of Human Rights ruling on July 9 that Russia is responsible for the loss of the plane.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the ruling as ‘null and void’, according to the Kommersant newspaper.  

The judgement made in Strasbourg is largely symbolic as Russia broke with the court in 2022 and had prior not been complying with its rulings, although it was hailed as ‘historic and unprecedented’ by Ukraine.  

More than a decade on, the search for justice continues as Putin pursues his murderous full-blown attack on Ukraine and ‘grey zone’ tactics across Europe and the UK. 

In the Netherlands, families of the victims want the wreckage to serve as a reminder for future generations. A national monument already exists near Schiphol Airport.  

Higgins said: ‘Following the convictions in the Dutch MH17 trial and the verdict at the European Court of Human Rights, there is still an ongoing case in the US where the family of a victim was recently given permission to go ahead and sue a Russian bank for enabling separatists in eastern Ukraine to continue their war, which resulted in MH17 being shot down. 

‘There’s also an ongoing debate in the Netherlands about what to do with the wreckage. Some families are hoping for the creation of a museum to house the wreckage and tell the MH17 story for future generations.’ 

Echoes of MH17 reverberated in the Azerbaijan Airlines crash that killed 38 people on Christmas Day. A Russian missile is thought to have brought down the plane as it tried to land at Grozny in Chechnya.

Moscow said at the time that an investigation was taking place and it would be ‘incorrect to make any hypotheses’ before it concludes. 

Higgins does not see any clear lines connecting the two incidents but does believe there is a lesson for history in the puzzle he helped to solve.  

‘I think these incidents are different enough that there’s no real pattern behind them, beyond the incompetence of the people operating the missile systems for the shootdown,’ he said.

‘MH17 was significant because it shows what happens when the West accepts lies told to them by authoritarian regimes in the name of diplomacy. Any authoritarian regime will continue to push at the boundaries of what’s acceptable, so they know how much they can get away with before a significant reaction.

‘With MH17 the failure to respond firmly to Russia’s secret invasion of Ukraine set up the circumstances for the shooting down of MH17, and eventually the official invasion of Ukraine in 2022.’ 

Do you have a story you would like to share? Contact josh.layton@metro.co.uk

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